"I love this!" Haz Montana says with the same kind of enthusiasm Robert Duvall had for napalm in "Apocalypse Now." "I love this format. I love this music. I love being in a radio station that is presented in Spanish. I really do. I don't know why. Maybe I'm a freak." Well, that's a possibility. Let's just say it's rare for the son of Iraqi immigrants, raised in a Jewish neighborhood, to go on to program a Spanish-language radio station in the nation's most competitive market.

Josias Gonzalez kept a secret from his mother at the start of his senior year. The young man was born to traditional Mexican immigrants, and he knew his mom wouldn't approve of what he planned to do with his life in the United States. So Josias didn't tell her he was completing an application to the University of California. He had chosen Irvine and three other campuses, all far from the Central Valley town of Visalia where he grew up harvesting grapes alongside his parents.

A facility that uses horses to help rehabilitate disabled people said this week that it will appeal a recent city decision revoking its permit to operate. A city zoning administrator determined that Special Equestrian Riding Therapy Inc. must leave the site it leases at 9633 Baden Ave. by May 8 because the owner failed to meet several conditions of its land-use permit.

Rita Wilde's first act as she ascended to the job of program director at KLOS-FM (95.5) was a tough one. She had to remove a popular deejay, a presence on the rock station's airwaves for 16 years. The unlucky jock: Rita Wilde.

It's getting close to crunch time, or D-day, at KABC-AM (790). In what clearly was part pep talk and part warning, Drew Hayes, the new program director, hosted a bagels-and-cream-cheese session two weeks ago at KABC with 40 or so talk hosts, producers and other personnel. No lox, he explained--the ratings didn't merit it. "We're going to be No. 1," Hayes told the staff. "Some of you will be here--and some bodies will fly out of here."

The rhythms of Los Angeles' two top rhythmic music radio stations are undergoing some alterations. Both KPWR-FM (105.9) and KKBT-FM (92.3) have shaken up their management staffs--a bit of a shock considering that they're ranked Nos. 4 and 5 in the market's ratings, and Nos. 1 and 2 among English-language music stations. But each also suffered ratings slips in the 1998 first-quarter figures compiled by Arbitron, with KPWR (known as Power 106) dropping from a 4.

Stuck in rush-hour traffic without your tape of Stephen Sondheim's 1964 flop-turned-cult-classic "Anyone Can Whistle"? No need to panic. Just tune the dial to KGIL 1260. If L.A. show-tune junkies have seemed a little less edgy lately, credit goes to this AM station, which reinvented itself last July with an unlikely "all musicals, all the time" format. (This came on the heels of a seven-month all-Beatles stint.) Eight months of radio nirvana for show-tune fanatics followed.

A couple of co-workers rushed Eddie Cancela into a crowded conference room above the KLAX-FM (97.9) studios one day last month, ostensibly for an important meeting. But when he burst through the door, the station general manager found the room crowded not with deep-pocketed clients, but with clerks, technicians and secretaries. And the table was covered not with sales charts and financial reports but with a birthday cake and boxes of takeout pizza.

With all the radio station format and ownership changes in recent years, imagine if, with one of them imminent, the staff of the station--say the old KMET-FM before it became the Wave, or KSCA-FM (101.9) before it switched from adult alternative music to Mexican tunes--said, "Hell, no, we won't go," and staged a strike. It's hard to conceive in this age of $100-million station deals and six-figure contracts for many deejays.

El Proyecto del Barrio is seeking participants for a free program offering educational counseling and vocational training for underprivileged youths between 17 and 21, according to officials with the Arleta-based social service agency. The new "School-to-Career" program received a $600,000 three-year grant from the city of Los Angeles' Job Training Partnership Act in October, said program director Carol Coller.